Monday, February 17, 2014

If it's not one thing, it's another.

My husband and I were sitting
peacefully over the remains of Sunday lunch yesterday, reading each
our separate sections of the Sunday Times, when a mouse skittered
across the kitchen floor. I saw it again (or one of its friends and
relations) at bedtime.

We live in a tenement. There are bound
to be mice. Some years ago we were rather troubled by their
skittering. Then Greek Helen gave us one of those things you plug in
which is said to make a noise inaudible to humans but distressing to
mice. We haven't seen any mice for a long time. She gave us two or
maybe even four mouse-repellers, but somewhere in the intervening
years Rachel had mouse trouble in London and I passed the others on
to her.

Do the electrical things wear out? Do
mice get used to them?

Edinburgh mice have never done anything
to us except skitter – no mess or damage. But I hate it.
Kirkmichael mice, on the other hand, Timmy Willie rather than Johnny
Town Mouse (literary reference), don't skitter at all but can do
quite a bit of damage and make quite a bit of mess when they have the
house to themselves. Everything in the kitchen must be well secured
against them. They like eating the insulation off water pipes.

We leave little plastic trays of poison
down for them (sorry, mouse lovers) and are always pleased when we
get back if we discover that they haven't eaten it – meaning that
they weren't there. The reserve supply of poison used to be under the
sink in a heavy plastic drum, until the time we found they had gnawed
through the lid and helped themselves. We can't have that sort of
thing, so now even mouse poison is kept in an old biscuit tin.

Knitting

I now lack only one row of finishing
the sixth repeat of the centre of the Unst Bridal Shawl.

Somebody's blog on Zite took me just
now to this
page on the V&A website, about regional knitting in the
British Isles. I must have seen it before. But this time I was
struck by the remark that “knitting probably came to Shetland from
England, as English words were used for the earliest knitting terms”.
I'd like to see the evidence for that in detail.

I once heard that if you have a cat you won't have mice...not true. Our basement happens to have a relatively ample supply of malted barley for my husband's homebrewing hobby which of course attracts mice. Our tabby regularly catches them and enjoys playing with them, our Siamese enjoys watching her with them but stays away from them (as in "eek a mouse"!). We have woken up during the night to the sound of cat chasing/playing with mouse in our living room and even in our bedroom...of course she has to bring them upstairs to share with us all! She thinks it very unfair when they get taken away from her and tossed outside!!